SWAINS LOCK (The River Trilogy, book 1)

by Edward A. Stabler

  Something invisible passed just below his eyes and his chest slammed into a submerged rock. Breathless and jolted, he stopped and groped for handholds, then lifted his buzzing head above the surface. Had this rock been underwater earlier? The water all around him seemed faster and sounded different than it had on his first crossing, the gurgling, lapping noises replaced by a rushing sound that was steadier and deeper-pitched. Head above water, he grasped the rock’s upstream face and let the current pull his legs downstream. He took full breaths, aimed for the upstream lights, and thrust himself back into the flow.

  His arms grew tired and almost numb as the river cooled them, and he considered shedding his shorts to swim in his underwear. It would be much easier, he thought; I’d be almost naked. But I don’t want to give up my knife yet… or my wallet and all my cards. Or the two small keys. If I drop them I’ll have nothing to show for my trip to Gladys Island.

  But I’ll have nothing anyway if I lose Nicky, or if she’s already gone. Nothing left but an aging dog and a tenuous connection to the surface life. Maybe I’ve lost it all already, and I’m swimming out of my old life into something else. He stopped to glide with his face in the water. I could let go and drift downstream. Then I wouldn’t need my ID cards. It’s two miles to the Falls.

  No. He rolled his head sideways for a breath and resumed swimming. I need to find Nicky. For better or worse. We’re getting married next month. He raised his head to get his bearings and the hilltop lights swam in a hazy aura. Both upstream now, but seemingly closer. He blinked and squinted while treading water, then reset toward the upper lights and swam on.

  I will find Nicky, he told himself, and leave this ill-starred odyssey behind. This riddle has toyed with me for almost a year and has pulled us apart. We’ll get married and I’ll finish my consulting work. Then I can restart my career. Can, he wondered, or will? A wave lapped his open mouth and he inhaled a mixture of air and water. He stopped to lift his head, coughing and gasping. Maybe I can stand here, he thought. He stretched his legs but didn’t find the bottom, and his head slipped back underwater. Shit! He kicked and thrust to the surface, and the burst of activity inflamed his muscles. His lungs felt raw. He caught his breath, lowered his head into the water, and swam on.

  He was close enough to the Maryland shore now that the hilltop lights were far apart and hard to see. His hand brushed a large rock, then another. He held it and looked up to see the dark shape of the mainland looming ahead. There were too many rocks now, some visible and some submerged, to swim blindly. He took shallow strokes with his head up, pulling himself forward when he found an underwater handhold. Soon his hands felt silt. He pulled himself to the water’s edge and scrambled up to the vegetation.

  The water streamed off his legs and back and his skin tightened with chill as he assessed the terrain. Where was he? Somewhere below his launching spot at Swains. The flat apron with its scattered trees and campsites was nowhere in sight; the ground in front of him was a clutter of twisted saplings and rotting washed-up trunks. He plunged into the brush, stepping lightly with bare soles but moving as fast as he could. Across a ditch he confronted another channel of water – he had landed on a seamed and nameless claw downstream from Swains. Long enough, but too emaciated to be called an island. The backwater channel was barely moving, filled by seeping veins from the main current upstream. A steep, rocky bank across the channel climbed to the canal and the towpath, only eighty feet away.

  Groaning, he staggered down and pushed out into the channel. Every muscle wanted to float and rest, but thirst for air made him breathe and his breathing made him swim. He crossed the backwater mindlessly and crawled out, then scrambled up the bank and saw the pale ribbon through a screen of trees. A cry of gratitude and relief in the back of his throat was throttled before it found release. He still had to find Nicky.

  He stepped through the trees and stared at the crouching water of the canal. The towpath glowed softly and he peered into the gloom along its course. Was that a faint white shape in the distance upstream? When he strained to see it, it receded into the darkness. His feet were already sore, and he rubbed his soles on his shins to brush them free of pebbles. Thin slices of the towpath had been smoothed by the tires of countless bicycles; he stepped into one of these tracks of softer dirt, then leaned into a few long steps and started running.

  Water dripped from his shorts onto his legs and feet, which were soon caked with mud. The night air felt humid against his bare chest and his lungs began to burn. I’ve been running on the towpath for a year, he thought, but this is the first time I’ve run it at night. Or barefoot. A breeze arose and died and the trees swept arching branches through the sky over the canal. He settled into a rhythm of striding, breathing, and pain.

  This all started on my birthday, he thought. When Nicky gave me the driftwood collage and I had to assemble it. That was the only reason I went out to that old shed in the woods – to look for a work surface. And I found the mark on the plank and the note and the drill hidden in the wall behind it. Was I drifting before I found the mark, as Nicky implied, or have I been drifting since? The white shape appeared in the distance again. It should be closer by now, he thought. Is it moving upstream along with me? Maybe I’m still chasing Emmert Reed’s albino mule.

  No, I found her. I found Gladys and visited her island. And I dug up pieces to Lee Fisher’s puzzle, but lost the one that might be worth something. My search is over now, and the money – if that’s what was in the toolbox – is gone. I’m sorry, Lee, but I don’t know what happened to you. I never learned the truth.

  The white shape hovered before him and became part of the rhythm of his running. It was the whitewashed stone lockhouse at Swains, gaining tangibility as he approached. If I can just get back to my bike, he thought, I can finish this misbegotten triathlon and be home in half an hour. And find out that Nicky is alright. And confirm that my fears are unfounded, like Lee’s fears may have been unfounded.

  He visualized his bicycle locked to the post where he’d left it and recited one number from its combination lock with every fourth footbeat. 3…19…36…3...19…36. He was still intoning the sequence when he reached the white shape and the gates of Swains Lock.

  A looming form ahead surprised and alarmed him: a long dark arm barred most of the towpath. After a confused moment he realized that it was a swing-beam. The downstream lock gates were closed! Normally the beam rested parallel to the towpath, held in place by a taut wire cable that connected the swing-beams together across the lock, preventing either beam from moving. But now the cut wire hung limply from an eye-hook in front of him, falling tensionless onto the towpath. As he stepped around the distal end of the beam, he heard the bubbling sound of churning water and a pleading stream of words he couldn’t understand in a woman’s voice. His apprehension congealed into fear and he darted to the lock wall.

  Peering down into the darkness, he saw the water was higher than he expected, and moving. It was welling up behind the upstream gates and flowing toward him as the lock slowly filled. Who had opened the wickets? From the wall’s midpoint, he squinted at the upstream gates beyond the footbridge. The three nearest stems were naked, but the stem closest to the far wall was crowned by a slim perpendicular shadow the length of his arm. A lock-key! He looked at the area around both gates but saw no one.

  He started across the lock to investigate. As his foot struck the bridge, a plaintive voice rose from the gloom below.

  “Help me, I’m chained!”

  The hair on his arms stiffened. It sounded like Nicky, somewhere beneath him! He backtracked to the wall and dropped to his knees. Standing under the bridge in shoulder-deep water was a woman with short, straight hair. Her head hung forward and her upraised hands were braced on the stones of the far wall.

  “Nicky!”

  “Help me… Vin! I’m chained!” Her voice sounded alien and remote and she answered him without turning away from the wall or lowering her hands.

  “Hang on,
baby! I’ll get you out!” He sprung to his feet and raced across the footbridge, then skidded to a stop and strode up the lock wall to the upstream gate. Grasping the end of the lock-key with both hands, he felt a sticky substance against his palm. He swung the key and heard the rush of water grow louder, then immediately pushed it hard in the opposite direction. The bubbling sound subsided. The wicket had only been opened part way. He exhaled in relief as the bubbles below him dissolved into swirls. Glancing at his palm, he saw that it was stained with a viscous fluid that looked like blood.

  “Nicky!” he cried, walking back along the wall to a vantage point where he could look under the bridge, “are you hurt?”

  “I can’t get out! I’m chained!” She answered without looking at him and his anxiety mounted again. She sounded drugged… maybe she was cut! She could bleed to death in the water! What had happened? How was she chained?

  “Hang on, Nicky! I’ll get you out!” He sat down with his legs dangling over the edge, then set his hands against the wall and dropped into the lock. As he collapsed into the water, his feet struck silt at the bottom and penetrated to the buried stone floor. He stood and let the water stream from his head and shoulders, then turned toward the gloom under the footbridge.

  When he was able to focus, he saw Nicky standing nearby, head still hanging forward and hands pressed against the stone wall. He waded over and put his hands on her shoulders. “Nicky,” he said softly, “are you bleeding? What happened?”

  “My leg,” she whispered, still without raising her head or lowering her arms. “It’s chained… a metal box…” She sounded distant and her breathing was shallow, but she didn’t seem to be in pain. Vin couldn’t see any obvious injury. Beneath her wet v-neck shirt, her shoulders trembled at his touch. “Shackles…I can’t lift it. The water… getting deeper…”

  The shackles! Preoccupied with the disappearance of the toolbox from Gladys Island, he hadn’t noticed that the leg-irons he’d unearthed along with it had vanished as well. If one of the cuffs was clamped to Nicky’s leg, did that mean the other was locked to the missing toolbox? The keys! He dug into his pocket, hoping they were still there. One for the toolbox, one for the shackles.

  “Nicky!” he said quietly, leaning toward her ear. “I turned off the water. It’s not rising anymore.” Her breathing seemed to slow and deepen but her eyes remained closed. “I’m going to duck underwater to try to find the box. I think I have the key to the shackles.” He saw a trace of a nod, then looked down to guess the location of the box. “OK, Nicky. Just stay where you are.”

  He dropped into the water and thrust his arms to push himself down. When one hand felt the mud at the bottom of the lock, he swung the other outward and touched Nicky’s calf. Which ankle were the leg-irons clamped to? He swept his hand down along her leg in search of the cuff but found the chain instead. It was taut, and his hand traced its path outward from her ankle. The other cuff was clamped to the toolbox just over a foot away. He groped to find the handle and curl his fingers around it. It felt exactly like the handle he’d gripped on Gladys Island. What kind of insidious treasure was this? The pressure in his lungs was building, so he tightened his grip and pulled his feet beneath him.

  As he stood, he heard a splash and felt the turbulence of a fallen body. Nicky must have collapsed into the lock! He needed air before trying to help her, so he rose for a breath and scanned the surface. There were swirls beside him and he felt a forearm brush his leg. Still holding the toolbox, he reached his free arm into the water and leaned over. Just as he touched a receding leg, he felt a metallic jab against his right ankle. He winced and withdrew as the handle was yanked out of his hand and the box fell back to the bottom of the lock.

  “What the hell is…” He dropped into the water and swung his arms for Nicky but felt only her swirling wake. When he kicked his feet out, he felt a sickening tug against his ankle. This can’t be… He lifted his right foot and felt the closed cuff as the shackle bit into his skin. Pulling his ankle toward him with both hands, he felt the weight of an attached anchor. In disbelief, he tried to pull the cuff open with his fingers. It was firmly locked.

  He released his shackled ankle and stood. Where was Nicky? Was someone holding her underwater? “Nicky!” he yelled against the echoing walls. The disturbed water was slopping back and forth in the lock, chop reflecting from the sides. “Nicky!” No one answered, but he saw a presence rising slowly from the surface along the far wall, a few feet from the upstream gates. It was her. “Nicky! What’s happening?”

  Hands parallel, she was gripping something on the lock wall. Her back hunched and her head and shoulders ascended a foot. She was climbing a rope ladder that lay flush against the wall near the upstream gate. That’s the ladder from our basement, Vin thought. I didn’t notice it when I ran across the footbridge… the key was on the opposite gate, so I wasn’t looking at that part of the lock. His pulse raced as a wave of nausea and despair engulfed him. “Nicky!”

  As she climbed without turning toward him, his queasiness distilled to anger. He plunged underwater and brought his knees to his chest, traced the chain to the box, gripped its handle, and stood up, balancing tensely on his free left leg. Nicky was climbing from the ladder onto the top of the lock wall. He hopped on his free leg until he was under the middle of the footbridge and had a better view. She unhooked the ladder and methodically pulled it out of the lock.

  “Nicky! We can find someone to help you! But you need to get me out of the lock!” Nicky rolled the ladder as she retracted it, then dropped it balled-up onto the grass. “Nicky, if you drain the lock, I can open the shackles and climb out!” He felt himself leaning so he hopped to regain his balance. “You can use the lock-key, Nicky! You just need to move it to the lower gates! The key is on that stem,” he said, gesturing toward it as he began to shiver. “If you cross the bridge, you can lift it off.”

  With her wet clothes clinging to her body and her dripping hair screening her face, she walked onto the footbridge. He pivoted under the bridge and looked hopefully up at the berm-side wall, waiting for her to reappear. He was starting to cramp from balancing on one leg, so he lowered his shackled foot to the lock floor. To keep his grip on the toolbox, he bent over until his mouth was near the water. Nicky emerged and walked unhurriedly along the lock wall to the swing beam, where she leaned over to grasp the lock-key with both hands.

  “That’s right, honey,” Vin said, as she rocked it lightly back and forth. “Now just lift it straight up off the stem.”

  With a fluid motion that belied the resistance of water against wicket at the base of the stem, she swung the lock-key ninety degrees. Upwelling water immediately formed haystacks against the back of the upstream gate.

  “Nicky! Turn it the other way!” The swelling and bubbling water rolled down toward his face, so he stood again but lost his balance and had to drop the toolbox. The rising water broke over his sternum and slopped against his collarbones.

  “Nicky!” he screamed. She released the lock-key, walked deliberately out around the end of the swing-beam, and returned to step onto the crossing plank. “Nicky,” he pleaded. “Help me! Turn the key the other way!” She proceeded along the walkway to the center of the lock, where the swing-beams and crossing planks met in a shallow V.

  Then she stopped and turned toward Vin. The water surged and lapped at his neck and his brain filled with questions and fears. As she faced him, he could see her gleaming legs were unhurt. Her wet khaki shorts hugged her slender, boyish hips, and her drenched shirt clung to her strong shoulders and small, well-formed breasts. Her lowered chin and downturned eyes were framed by dark and dripping hair. That’s Nicky, he thought, trying to reason through a tide of adrenaline and fear. That’s my fiancée. She must be in some kind of trance. I can break it! I have to get through to her!

  “Nicky,” he cried again, raising his chin and thrusting his hands down to rise as high as he could. “It’s me! It’s Vin! I love you!” By paddling and kicking hi
s free and shackled feet he was able to keep his whole head above the surface. He sought out her eyes with the hope that he could shatter her somnambulism and make her recognize him.

  Instead he saw what he’d overlooked until now, and a dagger of horror impaled his heart. Above her breasts hung a pendant necklace in the shape of a leaf. It was Nicky who had followed him out to the island! In shock, he realized that the woman facing him wasn’t Nicky anymore. As she lifted her eyes to meet his, he could see the gleam of her teeth between parted lips. A dream image flashed before him, of a girl with incandescent blue eyes staring across the dark canal. Nicky turned away, continued across the walkway, and stepped down onto the lock wall. He pumped his arms to lift his head and watch her go. She disappeared without looking back.

  He screamed in fear and anguish, then tried to think clearly. The downstream gates offered no handholds or footholds, but two cross-beams on the backside of the upstream gates were still visible above the churning water. He knew there was a triangular sill at the base of the gate and another submerged cross-beam. If I can drag the box to the upstream gates, he thought, I should be able to climb onto the sill. Then I can step up onto a cross-beam. I’ll have to contend with the torrent, but it’s only coming through one wicket.

  He dropped underwater to collect the toolbox, then began hopping through chin-deep water toward the upstream gates. As he emerged from under the bridge, his foot found a downward slope in the floor of the lock and his leg slipped out from under him. His head plunged underwater as his leg skidded into a hole. Shit! He quickly dropped the toolbox onto the lock floor behind him, transferred his weight to his shackled foot, and pulled his free leg out of the hole. His chest throbbed from the exertion and he thrust his head up for a breath. The hole could be lethal, he realized. I don’t know how deep it is. If I had dragged the box into it, I might not be able to pull it out. The upstream gates are out of reach. Think!